General Healer Discussion [The Echo Chamber]

[ty_taurus]

Listen, I get irritable about this kind of stuff sometimes. I get it. It's not a great way to respond to people, but at the same time, game design is something I am deeply passionate about generally. I studied game design. I work in game design. I love healer and support roles and love how much better these roles have become over the years in many games, so it really frustrates me to see my favorite role in one of my favorite games suffer from bad design choices in the name of playing it as safe as possible. I see such a wellspring of potential being stifled and suffocated in the name of not scaring away this very specific, delicate community of healers who are deathly afraid of have anything more to press during their copious amount of healing downtime than 1 or 2 buttons even if the vast majority of content, and likely the only type of content this specific group largely experiences, doesn't ask you to master any additional skill in order to complete.

Whether intentional or not, I find the consistent opposition to discussing FFXIV's healers and what the problems are to be really disrespectful to the job design of healer and support roles in gaming. I shouldn't feel that way, but I do, and that makes it really grating on me over time. What we have is not good design. It's infuriating design. And while there's nothing wrong with not caring about it, not feeling the same passion that I or any others feel, not being bothered by the severe lack of gameplay by the role or the apparent distain for healer complaints the developers seem to feel, the constant opposition is nails-on-a-chalkboard aggravating to deal with, especially when a large chunk of it comes across as disingenuous and in poor taste.

But I also feel bad for being snappy about it also, and I don't like feeling like I've attacked anyone either. So its tough some days.

[Semirhage]

But I also feel bad for being snappy about it also, and I don't like feeling like I've attacked anyone either. So its tough some days.

Don't worry, you have me for that. I don't feel bad about it. Because I feel like at this point I've seen every single angle on the Sylphie attack vector. I'm beyond over it and uninterested in a "good faith discussion" about it. Because there really isn't common ground. You see, every discussion in this vein starts seemingly neutral. I want X, they want Y, there's a vague attempt to describe a world where X and Y have their time in the sun. But push them on it even a little bit and they start stamping their feet and revealing what they actually want: not X. They don't want Y. They want -not X-. Suggest a skill ceiling and the wailing and gnashing of teeth begins.

These people don't want low skill floors. They want nonexistent skill ceilings. They don't want accessible content, not really. What they want is healing to be an easy path to free stuff. Paying attention to your job's resources is bad. Even the existence of a suboptimal-but-still-present GlareMedica2 rotation that could satisfy the zero interactivity isn't enough. They want the lazy no-thought gameplay to be the optimal gameplay. They don't want to climb the mountain before them. They want to bulldoze it down, walk into the rubble, and declare they're at the peak now. They want an easy job that they can be told they're masters of by dint of unlocking the job stone.

Prod literally any Sylphie who claims they sympathize with the desire for more complex gameplay and that's the tantrum you're going to get. Every single time.

[AFuzzyMu11in]

Don't worry, you have me for that. I don't feel bad about it. Because I feel like at this point I've seen every single angle on the Sylphie attack vector. I'm beyond over it and uninterested in a "good faith discussion" about it. Because there really isn't common ground. You see, every discussion in this vein starts seemingly neutral. I want X, they want Y, there's a vague attempt to describe a world where X and Y have their time in the sun. But push them on it even a little bit and they start stamping their feet and revealing what they actually want: not X. They don't want Y. They want -not X-. Suggest a skill ceiling and the wailing and gnashing of teeth begins.

These people don't want low skill floors. They want nonexistent skill ceilings. They don't want accessible content, not really. What they want is healing to be an easy path to free stuff. Paying attention to your job's resources is bad. Even the existence of a suboptimal-but-still-present GlareMedica2 rotation that could satisfy the zero interactivity isn't enough. They want the lazy no-thought gameplay to be the optimal gameplay. They don't want to climb the mountain before them. They want to bulldoze it down, walk into the rubble, and declare they're at the peak now. They want an easy job that they can be told they're masters of by dint of unlocking the job stone.

Prod literally any Sylphie who claims they sympathize with the desire for more complex gameplay and that's the tantrum you're going to get. Every single time.

Truth time. This is how I feel. I guess I am a slyphie...

[MintnHoney]

Truth time. This is how I feel. I guess I am a slyphie...

Acceptance is the first step to recovery.

Jokes aside, it's okay to want to play a simple game, and it's okay to want to play a game in a simple way.

Let's use the theme park mmo moniker for a moment: you, as someone who goes to the theme park, may enjoy simply wandering the park. You might enjoy stopping to sit at a bench to people watch with some candy or food, and you may enjoy going on the merry-go-round, the ferris wheel, or would enjoy a slow ride that's meant to give you a certain vantage on the park (e.g. the Yoshi's Island ride at Nintendo Land), but avoid roller coasters and water-related rides, or virtual reality, bumper cars, etc.. No one's going to tell you that you're wrong for enjoying yourself the way you want and, on the off-chance that they do (and that you're not doing something actually illegal or indecent), they would be the assholes. But on the flipside, other people do enjoy roller coasters, water rides, virtual reality, and/or bumper cars, so those people will go on those rides. If you were to try to stop other people from going on those rides just because you don't like them, then you would be the asshole.
Even if you go with friends to a theme park, there will be times where said friends will want to go on a ride and you don't want to; if they do go, and you don't go, that's not the end of the world. They enjoy the ride, you can do something in the meantime, or just wait and watch, and then you meet back up, tease the friend who threw up, continue through the park, and life goes on.

It's the same idea here: you can go do whatever you want, yes, but if you want to play in certain kinds of content because you want to play a certain way, then you simply don't go to the content that demands you play in the way you don't like to. The opportunity cost is that you don't go to that portion of content. Curiosity can lead you to trying the content, but, if it's not to your taste and you really don't enjoy playing that way, then it's not for you and that's okay.
You just have to remember that there are people out there who like the same game, but like to play the other content and play in such a way that the game was designed but not necessarily to your taste, and that's okay also.

In the case of these threads of complaints and requests to add more to the role, it's not as if you're not being considered. There are snide comments sometimes, yes, but ultimately, requests have evolved over time to acknowledge that players who play on the simpler side do, in fact, exist for many reasons and the forum threads have also evolved as a result, to try and incorporate ways to leave you with the gameplay that you have enjoyed so far while still allowing them access to the gameplay that they crave and have been denied. The hard part is finding a way to convey this to the development team in such a way that they (1) understand it, (2) care about it, (3) believe it, and then (4) implement it with enough care so that they don't accidentally leave out one side of the fence for the other (as they traditionally have done for the role).

But that's just my thoughts and observations on the matter.

[ForsakenRoe]

In the case of these threads of complaints and requests to add more to the role, it's not as if you're not being considered. There are snide comments sometimes, yes, but ultimately, requests have evolved over time to acknowledge that players who play on the simpler side do, in fact, exist for many reasons and the forum threads have also evolved as a result, to try and incorporate ways to leave you with the gameplay that you have enjoyed so far while still allowing them access to the gameplay that they crave and have been denied. The hard part is finding a way to convey this to the development team in such a way that they (1) understand it, (2) care about it, (3) believe it, and then (4) implement it with enough care so that they don't accidentally leave out one side of the fence for the other (as they traditionally have done for the role).

While I can be very sarcastic at times, my ideas for how to change up healers have very much tried to include this fact, be it from making 'Glarespam' still possible via potency balancing, keeping the amount of extra buttons (and therefore extra spinning plates) in check, adhering to the lore as much as possible, considering how the engine works and limitations it'd create, etc. I'm sure other 'idea creators' have also had these considerations in mind when coming up with their versions. We might sound like we're mad about the players who enjoy current design healer, or 'just want to heal', but for me at least, maybe others too, a process occurs:

Me: "Hey here is my idea for how to make healers more interesting, by adding more damage stuff"

'Healer who only wants to heal': "I don't want to do more damage, I like how healers are now, I like it being simple and easy to understand like this"

Me: "I have changed the idea up, now it respects how simple WHM currently is, it can be played like current WHM and you'll do 98% of the current WHM's potential damage, it has strong thematic ties to the lore with new cool visuals, and everything feeds back in a loop to allow the damage skills to give you a really cool and powerful feeling healing tool. Also it has Stoneskin back, for those times where you get a greedy SCH who refuses to use shields at all, so you can pump your HPS even more if you want"

HWOWTH: "Stop trying to change the thing I like its perfect the way it is"

'Perfect' is subjective, and while us 'idea creators' have tried to keep the ideas under control to respect the wishes of as much of the healer playerbase as possible, some people just can't be pleased, because as someone else said in a different thread, they claim they don't want X, they want Y. But when you offer an idea that could provide X AND Y together, you realize: they don't want Y, if they get Y that's not a factor to them. They want 'Not X', that's the important part. As long as 'Not X' occurs, all else is secondary. In this case, Y is 'more to heal' and X is 'an actual damage rotation' I guess. It's kinda depressing to see such a desire to stamp out creativity or ideas, in this fervent rush to make sure that, apparently, 'healers only heal'. Still don't know where that idea came from, so I'm still guessing 'overtuned Cata Heroics'. And when we have 'more to heal', proven a bit by this tier's required healing, and also anecdotally I've seen a few times in dungeons with a 'curebot' healer, if you give some of these 'healers only heal' kind of players something to actually heal, they fall apart because they've never been pushed to actually heal, rotate CDs, manage MP vs Job gauge resource, etc. So maybe it's more accurate to say 'they say they don't want X (damage rotation), they want Y (more to heal). But what they actually want is 'Not X', and 'Not Y', instead they want Z (less to heal, so they can have the easy ride of pressing Cure 1 over and over while watching Netflix)'